15/10/2026
I used to absolutely HATE our hallway! 😂
When we moved into our Glasgow mews house, the entire place was painted the same beige-grey colour. Upstairs it looked OK, although a bit like dirty magnolia, but in areas with no natural light it was dismal. And with three landings, three narrow staircases and nine doors of dismal, there was rather a lot of it!
And unbelievably, we lived with it for THREE YEARS!
But the funny thing is, I didn’t really notice how drab it all was. Life was just very busy, I was honestly a different person then, and I simply didn’t spend any time thinking about it.
Then came cancer, followed immediately by Covid and lockdown, and suddenly I was at home most of the time for 15 months. I started looking at our house very differently.
My first instinct was to follow all those decorating rules about keeping dark, narrow spaces light and bright. So we painted the whole hall white.
And it looked like a string of hospital corridors! 😂
So I ditched the rules and went green! Green Smoke walls, Down Pipe doors, and suddenly the whole space had some personality.
I also knew I wanted a gallery wall. I had to give that staircase character! During lockdown, when none of us knew if or when we’d be travelling again, I came up with the idea of a travel gallery wall running up the stairs.
And that worked even better than I’d imagined!
The staircases haven’t got any wider and there’s no more natural light, but what a difference colour and art have made!
And I’m STILL not finished! 😂
I’d love to lift the carpet and have a stair runner, replace all those white plastic sockets and switches (once you see them, they cannot be unseen!!) and find a more attractive handrail. Although I haven’t the faintest idea where you buy a handrail!
But when I look back at that before photo, I think I’ve done pretty well. It might have taken me three years to notice how dismal it was, but I got there in the end! And now I love the whole quirky hall!!
So tell me, are you a believer in keeping dark spaces light, or would you throw out the rulebook and embrace the colour?
And how shocking is that before image!
Anne Marie 💗